A COLLECTION of poems with themes as diverse as September 11, Iraq and Dr Harold Shipman has won for its writer this year's prestigious Chair competition at the National Eisteddfod.

This year's winner was Dr Huw Meirion Edwards, of Bow Street, Aberystwyth, a lecturer in the Welsh Department at University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

An Eisteddfod spokesman said, "This year's subject [No-man's land] appealed to him because it was so suggestive and indefinite.

"The starting point was a couplet at the end of the first ode, 'Haws troedio tir ystrydeb/ Na rhynnu'n noeth yn nhir neb' (Easier to tread the land of the cliche than to tremble naked in no-man's land).

"Those are the verses of the first part of Y Tir Gwastad (The Plain) about what can happen in any relationship when ardor turns to habit, verses about emotional emptiness.

"Moral emptiness forms the basis of the second part of Y Tir Diffaith (The Desert) and the shadow of September 11 is heavy on those verses together with Afghanistan and Iraq.

"The final part talks about the heavy snow in the area in February this year but with the hawk watching its prey bringing to mind the atrocities of Dr Harold Shipman."

The Chair, as well as a cash prize of £750, is awarded for a collection of verse in strict measure not over 300 lines.

It is the second time Mr Edwards, who wrote under the name Neb (Nobody), has competed for the Chair and he beat five other entrants.

Mr Edwards was raised in Llanfairpwll and Cardiff and was a pupil at Ysgol David Hughes, Menai Bridge and Ysgol Gyfun Llanhari, Pontyclun.

He graduated in Welsh and French at the University of Wales, Bangor, and then spent three years at Jesus College, Oxford, gaining his doctorate in 1993 for a study of the work of the bard Dafydd ap Gwilym and his contemporaries.

He is married to Meinir and they have two children, Efa, 10, and Dylan, eight.

Since 1992 he has been a lecturer at Aberystwyth and he has published a number of books and articles.